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4 The Transformation of a Discursive Context From a Paradigm of Chinese vs. Western Learning to One of Science vs. Metaphysics B y 1917, in the discourse regarding knowledge both at Peking University and nationwide, one sees a marked transition from Zhang Zhidong’s dichotomy of integrated Chinese learning and more specialized Western learning to situating Chinese learning in a discourse on materialism versus spirituality and science versus metaphysics. Chinese learning was no longer treated as pertaining only to China but as moral knowledge that converged with the moral and metaphysical knowledge of European countries. In such discourses, Chinese knowledge continued to be classified into history, literature, philosophy , and philology—the four academic disciplines Zhang Zhidong and later Cai Yuanpei used to categorize Chinese learning—but it was incorporated into a more universal discourse on learning. In Cai Yuanpei’s curriculum for Peking University, erasing the dichotomy between Chinese and Western learning was based on a transcendental perception of learning, typified in the curriculum of the Philosophy Subdivision of the Humanities Division (1917–19) and the subsequent Department of Philosophy (1919–26), where many courses on classical Western philosophy from Descartes to Kant were offered, which dealt almost exclusively with the issue of epistemology . According to F.R. Ankersmit, the rise of epistemology was the result of conflicting interpretations of knowledge in the seventeenth century: whether knowledge came from the transcendental ego or was rooted in human experience . René Descartes was the first to use the modern notion of the mind as a forum internum, in which truths about the world and about the physical self were mirrored. Conflicting interpretations of the source of knowledge led to the subsequent acknowledgment by many Western philosophers that “[o]nly those beliefs that have come into being in accordance with the rules and under the 65 jurisprudence obtaining in the forum internum can count as knowledge.”1 Epistemology especially appealed to Cai Yuanpei, perhaps because it was the product of conflicting interpretations of reality, like the times in which Cai actually lived, and although it admitted the limitations of human understanding of truth, it was optimistic about greater human knowledge and explored avenues of fuller human understanding of truth. Moreover, it assumed the existence of a transcendental order of knowledge that was superior, though accessible, to human beings. The study of epistemology, therefore, offers an understanding of how humans explore this independent and transcendental order of knowledge. An increasing number of courses in classical European philosophy were offered in the early 1920s, after the appointments of scholars who completed their studies abroad, such as Zhang Yi. Before 1917, only a few Western philosophy courses were available. In 1914, the first year the philosophy subdivision enrolled students since its opening in 1910, courses in ethics, logic, aesthetics, linguistics, and psychology were listed alongside a survey of Western philosophy and Song and Ming Confucianism. But apparently not all were actually offered. In 1916, the Philosophy Department offerings included a course on Indian philosophy, ethics, Gongyang’s annotation of the Spring and Autumn Annals, Confucianism, anthropology, and ethnology.2 After 1917 courses increased significantly in number. By 1922, courses in Indian and Western philosophy included history of Western philosophy, aesthetics (taught by Cai himself), behaviorism and Comte’s positivism, Descartes and Leibniz, epistemology, history of modern epistemology, history of Christianity, Indian philosophy, history of ancient Indian philosophy, Consciousness Only (Weishi) philosophy, philosophy of religion, and history of religion.3 In the 1925–26 academic year, the only Western philosophy course not dealing with classical continental philosophy was on Auguste Comte. Compared with Qinghua University, which put greater emphasis on mathematical logic, Peking University never had a logic specialist, although Zhang Shenfu and Jin Yuelin, professors of logic at Qinghua University , often came there to guest lecture. Peking University focused more on the history of classical Western philosophy, largely ignoring contemporary Western philosophies such as American pragmatism and philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, a situation that lasted well into the 1930s.4 Most of the European philosophers that were taught at Peking University— Spinoza, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Kant, and Hegel—dealt with epistemology and tried to explain the relationship between human beings and knowledge, and the human ability to understand truth. One can say that European epistemology formed the basis of Cai Yuanpei ’s transcendental approach to knowledge, making it possible for him to be even-handed with respect to both Chinese learning and Western learning. It was also the basis of his famous...

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